Shadows of Black Elk

Black Elk's life has been one of the most influential voices in the spiritual environment of the United States. His life influenced many aspects of the native American culture, both within the Oglala Sioux, his own tribe, and across the nations of American Indian tribes. Born at a time before his people had made contact with white settlers, his introduction to them would change his life, and change the person he might have become. His experience in the wild west shows, and his connection with the catholic church would spread his name and his influence, but it wasn't till the author and poet John G. Neihardt described this holy man in his book Black Elk Speaks did Black Elk gain nationwide renown.
But How can we really say we know anything about Black Elk? This man lived a tremendous life, and had been influenced by so much of the blooming American country drunk on manifest destiny, but we know next to nothing of him, and his history. In fact we know far less about him than most people would expect.
Black Elk did not speak much English and so his life has largely been interpreted for him through sources other than himself. He could not write his own story and depended on others to tell it. But We can see through the many books written about him that he has been interpreted differently by each person who studied him based on the reason they had to listen. There is no primary source on Black Elk, no personal account of his own life. None of us has ever looked upon him and now we find we can only guess at who he was based on the shadows he casts. The light shining behind him that drove his life might never be understood. What we are left with is a myth of a man that was holy to many though few agree about what made him so. So what was Black Elk? A saint? A fool? A servant of Jesus? These are the questions we've asked of him for years, but they have long been the wrong questions. Inquiries by scholars of a mystic rarely entice true responses.

The Visions

In Neihardt's book the story of Black Elk's childhood is told. When he was very young he became sick enough that many thought he would die, a healer was called to tend to him but despite that Black Elk was unconscious for 12 days. Black Elk describes visions that he had during this time.

“behold the earth!” So I looked down and saw it lying yonder like a hoop of peoples and in the center bloomed the holy stick that was a tree and where it stood there crossed two roads, a red one and a black. “From where the giant lives (the north) to where you always face (the south) the red road goes, the road of good,” the Grandfather said,”and on it shall your nation walk. The black road goes from where the thunder beings live (west) to where the sun continually shines (the east), a fearful road, a rod of trouble and of war. On this also you shall walk, and from it you shall have the power to destroy a people's foes. In four ascents you shall walk the earth with power.” (J. Neihardt)

During this vision Black Elk is brought to the Sky to meet with the grandfathers of the universe, the creators of the world. He is given two gifts. One, water in a cup that he says represents the power to heal and grow life, the other a bow, the power to destroy beings and nations. In other words he is given the powers of life, birth and death being the two sides of the coin of living.
In addition to this he describes his nation as a hoop of people, and at the center of the hoop is the tree that he later describes as the tree of life growing at the top of the sacred mountain, which was his reference to Harney Peak in South Dakota. The two roads, the roads of destruction and the road good life cross right at the the sacred place where the tree of life grows, this is the symbolism saying that life is the balance point of these two forces that are the same as the two powers given to him by the ancient grandfathers. Though the vision is very long and includes many other symbols that are interpreted or not, I believe this to be the core message of his vision. It is a revelation to Black Elk of the nature of things, a giving of understanding about the life of his own nation, and the message that with this knowledge he is the voice of the grandfathers and those who know, to heal, and to teach his people, to engage them in the processes of life. He is not ordained into a system of man, but a system of transcendent understanding. This is a realization that I believe would influence his future actions.
The other major realization was that of the hoops. He says that he saw his nation as a hoop, which was one of many hoops that all existed and influenced each other. This understanding of different peoples interacting and having influence would, I believe, lead to his future relations with the new settlers.
The problem that arises comes from Neihardt him self. Neihardt was a self described spiritual student of Black Elk's, and a poet (H. Neihardt). He took on the role of spreading Black Elk's teachings as a source of spiritual enlightenment. Because of this many have questioned the legitimacy of his writing, claiming that he over embellished, condensed or interpreted what Black Elk said rather than writing down exactly what was told to him. Because of this lack of impartiality we are forced to recognize that even though Black Elk Speaks is said to be Black Elk's own words, in fact it is still a deviation large or small from what Black Elk likely truly believed.
Black Elk's Christian associations are hardly mentioned at all, further showing the incompleteness of the picture Neihardt is painting. It is clear he is creating an image by which people should stand in awe, a mythological symbol. Neihardt, with a light shining from a spiritual center cast a large shadow towards traditional Native American religion, creating an epic holy man that would influence white people's image of the American Native for ever.

Catholicism

In his adult life near the age of 45 Black Elk was baptized into the catholic church. This event more than any other in his life would serve to confound his life story behind two sides trying to claim him as their own.
Michael F. Steltenkamp has written multiple books about Black Elk that are biographical in nature. He describes Black Elk almost exclusively as a catholic who used his native religious beliefs only in service to the catholic church (Steltenkamp 1993). While most traditionalists describe the visions of Black Elk as a message from the creators of their own belief system, Steltenkamp takes great liberties in interpreting them instead as proof of Black Elk's devotedness to the catholic church. In describing the two roads Steltenkamp uses the two road teaching method of the christian missionaries of the time.
Because the native American's could not speak English often, and of course could not read the bible, the missionaries had pictures depicting two roads, one going to hell, the other to heaven, these two roads would intersect at various points. It was then tried to explain that the good path was the path of Jesus. Steltenkamp suggests that even though Black Elk had his visions before being exposed to missionaries or this concept of the two roads catechism, that the similarity between them might show that Black Elk was predestined to be a Christian disciple.

“according to both the vision and the map, the forces of evil have always contended with those of good. The vision's repetitive references to red, and red's association with the good make the map's Christ-event critical. That is the map's red section is identified with the christian era. It seems to be the path Black Elk prays his people might find and follow (Steltenkamp 1993: 96).”

Steltenkamp clearly interprets the visions of Black Elk in the only manner he seemed brought up to, which is in the christian sphere of good verses evil. This is a very strongly judeo-christian perspective and one that was one of the major miss-communications between the christian missionaries and the people they were trying to convert. As illustrated by Black Elk's vision it's self with in his culture it was much more common to see the world as in harmony. Death and pain were not evil, and money and wealth were not simply good. It was the flow of life, to live in the world meant to interact with life and death equally, one must kill to live, and be killed so that other could live.
Missionaries attempts to explain their religion fell short because they didn't take into account the Native Americans moral schema, which were entirely alien to their way of thinking. So even when native people came to accept Christianity, it was not as if they were practicing this religion in the same ways the whites would have. They would have taken the stories of Jesus and interpreted them within their own sphere of symbolism and understanding.
This is why I see Steltenkamp's interpretation as so far off the mark, but also see it as indicative of the folly that people who try to understand Black Elk, or any religious figure, always fall into. Because Black Elk's visions and explanations of those visions are so convoluted, but also so steeped in metaphor and symbolic imagery, it is very hard to understand, and because of the mythological nature of it it can really only be understood from your own sphere of experience, the things you have come to know and understand within your life. Because of this it is interpreted slightly differently by each person who hears about it. This is what leads to two people, like Steltenkamp and Neihardt hearing the same vision yet interpreting it so drastically differently.
While it is perfectly acceptable to interpret spiritual words such as these in anyway one must in order to understand them, the problem comes from the fact that Steltenkamp is attempting to write a historical book. But is heavily influenced by his obvious religious tradition (his book “Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala” was his doctoral thesis after having been a Jesuit priest for 2 years), and by the religious nature of his primary source, Lucy Looks Twice, Black Elk's daughter who was raised in a strictly catholic environment. This leads to further confusion about the man he is trying to depict. This, rather than creating a clear solid picture of a man which seems to be Steltenkamp's intent, further shrouds him. So still all we can see is the shadow of a historical man, cast by the light of a different religious intent.
Unfortunately for Steltenkamp's arguments against Neihardt, Steltenkamp is limited by the fact that his work has almost no direct words from Black Elk himself. Most of his “proofs” come from people talking about him, and most of them being priests of the time, or Native Americans who had already been converted. But of course also Lucy Looks Twice the daughter of Black Elk, but it is worth noting that the translator for Nicolas Black Elk was Ben Black Elk, the son of Nicolas leaving us to wonder which descendant is more right?
According to Steltenkamp himself, Neihardt asked Black Elk why he had taken to Christianity Black Elk is reported as having said “My children had to live in this world,” which seems it's self to contradict what he has set out to do in his book, essentially to paint Black Elk as a whole hearted convert to Christianity who rejected his old religious beliefs.

Dual Participation

In Clyde Holler's book Black Elk's Religion: The Sun Dance and Lakota Catholicism He proposes an alternate version to Neihardt's depiction of Black Elk as a pure traditionalist, and Steltenkamp's version of him as a devout catholic. He suggests that Black Elk followed each religion equally because the religions satisfied different needs for Black Elk.
In his chapter on Dual Participation he considers the Idea that the Lakota people accepted Christianity for purely social reasons (Holler 1995). That in order to maintain their culture they accepted the christian religious doctrine only as show. This places the spiritual practice still with the traditional beliefs. This is one theory also as to why Black Elk accepted Catholicism. It is suggested that he, as a leader within his tribe, recognized the best way to preserve his people was to play the game of the missionaries.
It seems somehow unlikely to me though that a person, let alone a whole group of people would participate in a religion for their entire lives under false pretenses. And it does not explain the incredible degree to which Black Elk took part in the Catholic church. Becoming a Catechist who taught his own people about Catholicism. It seems that Black Elk saw true spiritual value in the catholic faith.
It seems absurd to me that though people seem to have studied Black Elk so thoroughly, and yet I could not find a single person who considered that perhaps Black Elk found spiritual value in both religious practices.
The idea of “religion” was foreign to Native American culture. The idea that you have your life, then you have the things that you believe, and that those are some how two separate things. It's just the way things were, the gods were above and the stories were true. If I were to guess why Black Elk would have taken on the Catholic faith I would say it is probably because he was a profoundly spiritual person.
Black Elk took guidance from his visions, and from the world around him. I do not believe that he would have had any problem seeing the catholic faith as something that he was adding to his spirituality. I think the idea that he would have to replace one religion with another is a very simplistic idea. As a man of faith guided by his vision of the good red road and the tree of life Black Elk was a man who knew that the only sin was lack of participation in life, the good and the bad, the destructive as well as the creative. And as he was faced with multiple trials in his life, from the massacre at wounded knee, to the seizing of his people's land and the sacred peak that was the foundation of his vision, he accepted what came into his life.
I do not believe that the white catholic preists had a clear understanding of him as they interpreted him as a good catholic, for him I would expect that he was simply a spiritual man, living a spiritual life. A person who has experienced deep spiritual understanding sees that no religion is right, but all are paths to that which can't be understood. Black elk was a spiritual giant that was tall enough to see all the roads of man, he could see where they were going, and, being too big to simply walk one single path, walked where all roads intersected towards the light.

Conclusion

Black Elk is a figment, a shadow on the wall that has been fragmented by too many points of light trying to find him. In understanding this fact a person is left to take from his legacy what they will, knowing they can never know the man who spurred the spiritual moment that is named for him. As any mysterious figure in history from Jesus to Lao Tzu, he will be represented and re-represented in different ways as long as he is remembered.
But is there spiritual value in a legacy if the man is lost to history? Reading Black Elk Speaks can a person gain insight into his spiritual being even if it is not clear how much those words my have been influenced by the interpreter, the editor, and the speaker himself? I think they can. I believe that the words of Black Elk hold meaning for a movement, for a people searching for spiritual understanding in a time of struggle. The value is in the spirit of the words, not the words themselves. If there is a lesson to be learned from Black Elk's life it is to be flexible and open to the spiritual world and find it for yourself. Take Black Elk's words as a guide, take the bible as a guide, but in the end it is you who has to do the walking. It is you who has to navigate the rocks and the jungles that weren't mentioned in those guides.
Black Elk Speaks gives a way of existing in the world, but that was Neihardt's way, that was Black Elk's way, and that was developed by the place and time that they lived in. For those who take Black Elk Speaks as a spiritual book they must accept that in the end regardless of who your teacher is, you must understand the world yourself.






Works Cited
Steltenkamp, Michael. Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala. 1st. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993. Print.

Holler, Clyde. Black Elk's Religion: The Sun Dance and Lakota Catholicism. first. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995. Print.

Neihardt, John. Black Elk Speaks. 6th. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988. Print.

Neihardt, Hilda. Black Elk and Flaming Rainbow. 1st. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. Print.